The Common Core in New York

The new Common Core learning standards, which set ambitious goals for what students should learn from one year to the next, are desperately needed in New York, where only about a third of high school students graduate with the math and English skills necessary to succeed at college. But the standards, adopted in 2010, have had a bumpy rollout and are under siege from several constituencies.

To keep the momentum going, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Board of Regents, which oversees education in the state, need to resist any effort to roll back the reform. They have to continue to address legitimate criticisms of the way the standards are being put into effect — while also countering the rants of union leaders and other critics who are deliberately misleading the public.

The Common Core was little noticed by the general public until August, largely because only last spring did the state shift from its old standardized tests for grades three through eight to ones based on the new learning standards. Scores declined, as expected; only about 31 percent of the state’s students in those grades met or exceeded the new proficiency standard in English language arts, down from about 55 percent the year before. The decline in scores came as a shock to parents in affluent communities, many of whom insisted that the problem lay not in their schools but in the new tests.

The State Education Department deserves credit for the inventiveness it showed in creating the new tests and the curriculum materials that support the learning standards. In fact, those materials (instructional videos, teacher training kits and more) are widely used by educators in many other states.

New York, however, has failed to explain to parents and communities the aims of the Common Core and that much more would be expected of students, teachers and schools than in the past. To add to the confusion, the state’s 700 districts vary widely in how well they have changed to a new curriculum and trained teachers to execute it. This has created a great deal of anxiety in the teacher corps, not least because the teacher evaluation system required by state law takes student test scores into account.

The current situation is made worse by infighting within the state teachers union, which has hardened its anti-Common Core position. The union complains that teachers will be unfairly judged if the new tests are included in their evaluations. But 80 percent of public school teachers will be evaluated entirely based on locally determined measures. Moreover, in last year’s evaluations, which were based partly on the new test scores, only 1 percent of teachers were rated ineffective.

The regents this week released a Common Core report in which they recommended allowing teachers to challenge unfair dismissal based on student test scores in the 2012-13 and 2013-14 academic years. This provision would also give the districts time to get the learning standards in place more fully.

After Governor Cuomo objected, the regents made the proposal tentative. But the idea makes sense and would make clear to nervous teachers that the state recognizes that the smooth adoption of the new standards will take a bit of time.

The regents reiterated that the districts would need more state money to accomplish these reforms, which will also require a larger investment in professional teacher development. Additionally, they voted to require high school students to pass Common Core-based graduation exams at the college-ready level in 2022, instead of 2017, to ensure that all districts would be fully prepared.

And despite widespread misconceptions, the regents again explained that the new standards do not require school districts to increase the number of tests. (The scheduled time for the federally required tests in grades three through eight, the Common Core report said, accounted for less than 1 percent of instructional time.)

However, local districts themselves have increased testing to comply with a provision of state law created at the request of the unions. The law requires that tests measuring growth in student learning make up 40 percent of an individual teacher’s rating — but half of that must be derived from local measures agreed upon in collective bargaining. To comply, districts have piled on tests, many of which serve only to eat up valuable instructional time. The regents have rightly instructed the districts to cut back on these exams.

The rollout of the Common Core standards, which will give students in all districts a better chance at a good education, has not been perfect. But missteps aside, the state cannot afford to let this project founder.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: The Common Core in New York. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe